alt Hacker NewsWhy does this have to take place in a meeting? Why can't it be in a team slack? What value gain do you give talking an engineer through what's bothering them? Are they not capable of that independently of you?
A middleman's value is quite limited, of course as a middleman, you don't see it that way, but I find these meetings extraordinarily unproductive, even anti-productive, depending on how bad the "manager" is.
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Usually people clam up and are not vocal during group meetings. I am not one of them but it's super common. 1-1s allow people to be more candid.
Yeah, if blockers are coming out in 1-on-1 meetings, that’s a really bad sign
> Why does this have to take place in a meeting?
Conspiracy theory (which I believe in): because calls or in office meetings are not persistent and they are not recorded, but chat messages are persistent. Anyone can say they didn't say something, it gets harder in writing.
> Why can't it be in a team slack?
Only a few people can adequately explain themselves through slack.
It doesn't help that a lot of managers are _bad_ managers, and don't/can't/don't know how to run a tight 1:1.
the point of the 1:1 is to provide a high bandwidth way of getting worries and steers from employees to management and direction back to employees. if there is nothing to talk about then cut the meeting short.